Whenever I hear someone talk about "cheating" on Weight Watchers, I feel like saying, ala Yoda, "There is no cheating. There is only do, or not do."

In order to lose fat, your calorie intake must be less than your calorie output, by whatever means. It's basic physics. You can no more "cheat" on that than you can disobey a law of physics, like gravity. Although there may be a lot of psychological and physiological factors involved, it comes down to, if your intake is less than your output, you lose fat. If it isn't, you don't.

When you "cheat," you deceive or betray someone. Since you can't deceive a law of physics, it seems to me that means you are only deceiving yourself, and betraying yourself. So the way to avoid cheating on Weight Watchers is to be honest with yourself. Of course, that's one of those things which may be simple, but is not easy.

I don't mean that we need to be 100% perfectly on program all the time. But I do think that being honest with ourselves about what we're doing is important, if we want to succeed at this. I also think that it's a way of showing respect for ourselves.

Sometimes we do the program, sometimes we don't. But let's try to be honest with ourselves about it. I don't know if we betray ourselves when we don't stay on program, but I'm convinced we betray ourselves when we pretend TO OURSELVES that we're on program when we're not.

The reason I've started over on Weight Watchers 3 or 4 times is that I wasn't honest with myself about being on program. Oh, I kept to my target points, and exercised, and even (mostly) drank my water. But I only paid lip service to the part about its being a lifestyle, not a diet. I was dieting. I never made a commitment to myself to keep doing this for life. I never even honestly looked at the fact that I would need to do that in order to maintain a healthy weight. It was always "Good, I lost the weight. Thanks, sayonara." This time (maybe because I'm doing this more for health than just for weight loss), I've at least realized that I can't just go back to eating the old way if I want to maintain. I'm in the process of making that a commitment to myself, but to be honest, I am nervous about it, because "for life" sounds like a long time. It may be something I end up needing to take a day at a time.